Kurt Brindley's Blog, page 141
October 3, 2014
I’m really not feeling…
Truth Alone Needs No Tending
He looked out upon the field, upon its row after row of newly planted corn, and let its effect take over his vision. Even as long as he’d been farming it still all seemed like an optical illusion to him, an illusion of eternity.
But something didn’t feel right. Stomach said so.
It’d been two weeks of constant rain, heavy most of the time. Today was finally clear enough for him to get back on his tractor and do some work other than pushing manure around in the barn. Felt good to be back on the machine and working the dirt.
Fields don’t tend themselves. That’s what his father always said. And his father.
And then it happened.
Stomach prophecy. Never failed.
The tractor quit. Just quit. Wasn’t like it to go ahead and do that. It’s always been what he could rely on most. He checked and saw that he still had more than half a tank of gas. He hopped down and the soft wet dirt sucked him in and rose above the soles of his boots. He checked his cell phone. No signal, of course. Never was this far out.
He circled around the tractor a couple of times. Took off his ball cap. Scratched at his head. Just wasn’t like it to quit like that.
The soft wet dirt was cold and made him cold as it soaked into the back of his shirt. He strained his eyes to see into the machine’s shadowy underbelly. Nothing he could see looked amiss. He never was much of a mechanic — that was always her job; she always ended up fixing the things he broke and his friends always gave him hell for that — but he didn’t see anything that looked as if it would just go ahead and make it quit like that.
He stood back up and began counting costs. The towing. The repairing. The interest on the over-extended credit.
But something still didn’t feel right in his gut. It was something more than the machine it was telling him.
And no sooner than it did, he saw the first one. He saw one and then he saw another. And another. And another until the entire horizon was overcome by them. A massive crowd of people was running across his field and coming toward him fast, very fast.
He climbed up his tractor and stood up on his toes as high as he could. Even still, he couldn’t see the end of the crowd. It just kept coming.
He stuck himself halfway into the cab and turned at the key. Still dead.
He got back down off the tractor and watched the approaching crowd. They were loud. Screaming. Screams of terror.
His crop was ruined, no question about that. He thought of the bible and of its locusts, but nothing more than what he could remember from his Sunday School as a child.
And then they were upon him and there was nothing for him to do but to turn and run. And to begin screaming. Screams of terror.
Filed under: Flash Fiction Tagged: Apocalypse, bible, dystopia, end of times, farming, flash fiction, illusions, machines, prophecy, short stories, Sunday School, writing
October 2, 2014
Can someone please tell me…
How much longer will the internet’s unbearable fascination with cats last so I can come back when it’s over?
#catspammedtodeath
#felinephobia
#catcanatonia
#AuthorsUnitedAgainstCats
Filed under: Culture, Humor Tagged: authors, Authors United, cat haters, cat lovers, cat memes, cats, memes, writers, writing
My Subjunctive Mood Always Brings Me Down
If I was were a less sensitive grammarian, then I would care less whether my grammar were was more or less correct. However, if it was were true that I were was a less sensitive grammarian, would it then mean that I were was a less caring person?
Filed under: Writing Tagged: culture, English, grammar, grammar humor, humor, language, pedant, psychology, subjunctive mood, writing
Poeting hard on this most poetic of days…
POETIC LICENSE
Thank God for the passionate poet
Who trumpets the sun’s morning rise
And who writes lovely, pretty sad songs
Of young lovers’s heartbreaking goodbyes
Thank God for the passionate poet
Who reaches right into the heart
To stroke it, to tease it, to please it
And sometimes to tear it apart
#NATIONALPOETRYDAY2014
~~~~
From my poetry collection Poems from the River
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: books, literary, National Poetry Day, POEMS FROM THE RIVER, Poetic License, poetry, poets, rhymes, writing
Zelda…and her writer husband
Hanging out in B’more this morning. The Fitzgerald’s have an ever-present presence here, especially Zelda.
It makes me happy.
#wherewewritershang
Filed under: Literary, Photography Tagged: Baltimore, F Scott Fitzgerald, Fells Point, writers, Zelda Fitzgerald, zen
Inside Your Head There’s a Record That’s Playing
Tom WaitsHold ON
They hung a sign up in our town
“if you live it up, you won’t
live it down”
So, she left Monte Rio, son
just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
she went and took that California trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
hair like wind
She said don’t look back just
come on Jim
(Chorus)
Oh you got to
Hold on, Hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
and a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
but you share my bed, you share my name
Well, go ahead and call the cops
you don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes there’s nothin left to do
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here, you got to
just hold on
Well, God bless your crooked little heart
St. Louis got the best of me
I miss your broken-china voice
How I wish you were still
here with me
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
you burn your mansion to the ground
When there’s nothing left to keep you here, when
you’re falling behind in this
big blue world
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You got to hold on
Down by the Riverside motel,
it’s 10 below and falling
by a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
and started swaying
but it’s so hard to dance that way
when it’s cold and there’s no music
well your old hometown is so far away
but, inside your head there’s a record
that’s playing, a song called
Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
and just hold on.
Filed under: Music Tagged: ANTI Records, Blues, experimental music, Hold On, lyrics, Mule Variations, music, music industry, music legends, songs, Tom Waits, writing
October 1, 2014
Is it just me or…
Do others get excited for a flash of a second when they think they are reading a splashy headline about the literary giant Milan Kundera and then feel all bummed out when they realize it’s actually about the actor Mila Kunis and then feel even more bummed out when they realize they couldn’t stop themselves from reading the entire vapid article?
Filed under: Culture Tagged: actors, authors, headlines, Hollywood, letdowns, Mila Kunis, Milan Kundera, optical illusions, tabloids, writers
Do Not Put Out To Sea
Do not put out to sea
if the fathoms fear your heart
or the waves crashing
the bow would be the horrifying start
of your decent unto the depths
of the mind’s cavernous holds
the unsolicitous brigs of silent solitude
Do not put out to sea
where the horizon never ends
and where the gull drifting
the wind with listless certitude tends
to veer the vessel off its course
and unto the desperate grip of the impatient settling shoal
if you’re ne’er true to the navigable stars of the sacred sky
Do not put out to sea
if to you a wake is nothing but the past
an impression of the moment faintly there
and then forgotten, ne’er does it last
unless cast in poignancy and pain
and set upon the mantle of despair
for it is the way, the calming captain of the morrow’s mind
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: calm, captain, despair, metaphors, mind, pain, poems, poetry, poignancy, sea, silent solitude, wake, writing
The Sophistry of Now
He was often troubled (their word, not his) by unconstrained and unaccountable lapses in time: reality would, without notice, fade away from him without the slightest tipping of the hat or bidding of adieu; and then, as stealthily as it had departed, it would just as unstealthily return, snapping into focus before him looking like a crazy beautiful melodramatic John Currin landscape (if he were to do landscapes). If he didn’t make a concerted effort as soon as he realized it had returned, wherever it had gone, wherever he had been taken, it would quickly sink beneath the horizon of his awareness and be forever lost within the ether of lost dreams.
He was relatively young, especially compared to those who more and more each day are seemingly living longer and longer and whom those TV morning things tend to exuberantly highlight, so it couldn’t possibly be due to any age-related withering of gray matter; though, of course, never being able to truly account for the synergistic effects of the foods and the medications and the environmental pollutants and all the other unknowns he had consumed or had been inadvertently, and possibly even advertently (why is that not a real word?), exposed to, it possibly could.
Or maybe the Currin was where it went.
Filed under: Flash Fiction Tagged: art, daydreams, fiction, flash fiction, john currin, landscapes, psychology, short stories, sophistry, writing
